Looking back at the hot conference topics in 2011

At the start of the year, we made some predictions about the topics that were likely to dominate the conference landscape in 2011 and, as is now traditional, we want to take a moment to reflect on the year. You may remember that in our original post(hyperlink) we thought the hot topics in 2011 would be:

• Mobile Devices
• Apps (cross devices)
• Social Media
• Cloud Computing
• Content
• Healthcare

Many of our suggestions were right on the money – a number of these topics have been growing for years now and are almost sure to continue to be important going forward. However, we also missed a few runaway trends (like Big Data), so want to spend the next few posts looking back, analysing the hot topics and providing insight on the conference industry in 2011.

We’ll also be making our predictions for 2012 in the next few weeks, so don’t forget to check back regularly!

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Hot conference topics and themes for 2011: mobile devices

This is an expansion of the mobile theme; with markets continuing to mature and mobile devices growing in affect across markets we expect them to feature more heavily on conference agendas. This will be particularly buoyed by the maturation of the tablet market, which is likely to feature more heavily on mobile event agendas and perhaps spawn tablet specific events.

Events in the telecoms sector such as the Mobile World Congress and Open Mobile Summit alongside the consumer electronic shows like IFA and CES will continue to be the main arena for mobile device discussions. However, mobile devices will also become an increasing focus at media and advertising events, with delegates wanting to know how to advertise on these platforms, reach new audiences and stay ahead of the curve. The proliferation of devices is also likely to inspire design and interface debate around how to keep user experience the same across devices and allow consumers to move freely between screens and across platforms.